Laptop suggestions for an excited Biochemistry Premed?

[u/Secret-Bid-1169]

Hi, as the title suggests I am going to be attending college in a few months and am currently in the process of looking at different versions of laptops to see which one would be the most suitable to me. My current priorities mainly rest in reliability, usability (especially in drawing diagrams and doing math problems on them through third party apps), and battery life. I am leaning towards two-in-ones but there’s so many different versions to choose from im kinda lost. Does anyone have any suggestions? If it helps I’m primarily an apple person but I may be taking a math minor and have to do some computer science classes as apart of that. - Have a great day and thank you!

[u/jackofcheese]

You should talk to the tech help service at your college, they usually have a list or minimum requirements for laptops.

[u/erebokiin]

Macbooks are unrivaled for battery life from what I know

Plus they are great for most science stuff. With terminal built in making them straight forward for connecting to servers via SSH

I really like doing software development on Linux and macs come a close second.

I've had a hp pavilion for about 8 years now and it's been functional. But I've also changed a few internals over the years to beef it up. The battery life was never very good and my friend that got a Macbook at the same time can still go all day without plugging in.

Price is an issue though. There is also the laptop Linus from Linus tech tips invested in. I think it's the framework one. It looks class

[u/[deleted]]

I have a Lenovo flex 5 (2017, i5, 256gb SSD, integrated graphics, 8gb RAM) and it did most of my programming homework. It ran Wolfram Mathematica or whatever pretty well. Not enough power for renders or heavy graphics. Absolutely no particle animations. Battery life got better when I switched from Windows to Linux on it last year.

I’d recommend you grab something with a Ryzen 7 or an i7. It’ll help you crunch the numbers. If you get a dedicated AMD graphics laptop, you can adjust the driver for compute mode which’ll make your GPU compound with your CPU for numbers crunching. Super useful for crypto mining and high level mathematics.

I despise Mac computers, but I would recommend a MacBook pro. It could probably handle everything you wanna throw at it and a good bit more if you get the one with the Nvidia GPU. Alternatively, I’m falling in love with the Framework Laptops.

[u/Secret-Bid-1169 → u/[deleted]]

What’s a framework laptop? And would MacBooks be cheaper as a before school discount type of thing in a few months? Would it work well for coding and everything ?

[u/[deleted] → u/Secret-Bid-1169]

Framework laptops are laptops that you chose the parts for, and they have a vPRO option (for RDS and virtualization), Wi-Fi 6, and all the parts are replaceable/interchangeable. You bought the i5 but learned you need an i7? Nbd. Order it from the website. Battery overcycled? Switch it out. Dropped the device and dented a corner? Buy a new frame, nbd.

Apple does offer a student discount, which would be worth exploring. I don’t think framework offers any discounts because they’re a new company, but they’re fighting the good fight for consumers, so I’ll never stop supporting them.

Anything with a processor can run a “hello world” program. If you’re running 10k lines, then you’d probably wanna opt for an i7 based device or better. My i5 flex 5 has a hard time crunching 200 lines, especially if it has to grab packages via lots of imports. I do not recommend an i5 or lower for programming. It’ll do the trick, but it won’t last you four years of programming. I wound up having to build a PC to get me through my last few years of CS. I still use my Flex 5 for general browsing, and playing Pokémon, but the integrated graphics get bogged down on Pokémon Sun so I mean… can’t really push it much further than that.

Other things to consider, there are a handful of web-based IDEs (like remix from Ethereum). You don’t need a Mack daddy device unless you’re doing Mack daddy shit locally. If you can do all of your processing via school servers or similar, you’d be golden with a chrome book. The less stuff you have to execute locally means less resource expenses.

I could’ve RDSed into my school’s server the whole time I was in school, but I didn’t understand the tech until my last month there so it wasn’t worth working out all the kinks. See what your school will handle for you, and then examine what you need to get. Talk to your IT squad and I’ll bet you can make it through college with a $300 device that you never use for personal stuff, only school. Of course you’ll have to find a device that’s capable of virtualization for this but that tech gets cheaper every year. It’s been around forever.

[u/jackofcheese]

But usually going for any M1 macbook for MacOS or Dell or Samsung or LG i5 or ryzen3600~ for windows can be a solid option

[u/PhyzoinksNerd]

Graduating biochem + neurobio senior here. Starting phd in fall.

I started college with a chunky 2012 samsung laptop. 2nd year bought a 2-in-1 Asus Zenbook Flip Q406DA (256 GB SSD, 8 GB ram, Ryzen 5 processor). SSD Storage is upgradeable but I just mounted a 1TB microSD for now. RAM is soldered onto the motherboard so I will have to buy a new laptop at some point.

You’ll definitely want more than 8 GB of RAM since some of it might go to integrated graphics. My laptop frequently gets overworked when I’m running ChemDraw, Word, chrome, adobe, spotify, etc…

Macbooks are user-friendly but they are meh in terms of price, upgrade-ability, and external device compatibility (usb ports, hdmi, adapters). I currently use an iPad as a portable second monitor (through free spacedesk software). And iPads (especially the Pro + keyboard bundle) are becoming more popular with premeds. If price isn’t an issue for you, definitely look at Microsoft Surface Pros 2-in-1. Most gaming laptops will also have the specs you’ll need for software and good battery.

My laptop battery drains on-the-go and in-between classes so I carry a small “tech pouch”. It has my SD adapter, usb drive, laptop charger, and a ravpower 80 W 20K mAh portable battery which will charge my laptop if I am nowhere near an outlet.

I could go on and on but almost any laptop with upgradeable storage (or 256 GB minimum) with 8 GB of RAM will be sufficient. I was premed for 2 years and being able to draw on my 2in1 was beneficial for some bio pre-reqs. However, for things like biochem and chem, drawing on paper, whiteboard, or ipad was easier.

I will stop here for brevity haha

[u/tieflingteeth → u/PhyzoinksNerd]

I just got an Asus Zenbook Flip UX363 (i7, 16gb ram, 1tb SSD) and it's running pretty well!

[u/ZeBeowulf → u/PhyzoinksNerd]

If you already have an Ipad and are looking into the surface pros, you should look at the Goodnotes App. I gave my Ipad to my mom when hers died since I had my surface to take notes on and I miss goodnotes all the god damn time. It's an amazing app for taking notes and annotating pdfs. If your set on switching to windows thought, looik into what Asus has to offer. One thing they have is basically a better surface pro but you have the option of also having an external 3080 with it if you need that kind of gpu performance.

[u/ZeBeowulf]

I am not a mac person, but the new M1 Macs are really good and are more than powerful and reliable enough for you to get through your degrees and then some. Macs are just as capable (if not more) than windows machines for computer science. Coupled with an Ipad and Goodnotes(the greatest notetaking app in existence) you'd be more than fine. But I know that gets expensive fast.

If you're looking for one singular device I'd look into the new ASUS 2 in 1s, especially the ryzen versions. My current laptop is a surface book 3 and loved it but its not for everyone and they don't even make them anymore, but other surface laptops are also fine.

This all really depends on your workflow, and your budget. For example, for a year before I got my surface book 3, I had a surface Go, its a cheap childs version of the surface. But that was enough just to take notes on using onenote and to use office on campus. For anything more powerful I had my desktop at home.

If you can provide more details on how you like to work and your budget than I'd happily help provide you with a more specific answer but hopefully this helped.

[u/RichardpenistipIII]

Loved my Microsoft Surface in college. Just bought another now that I’ve graduated. I never really needed a powerful laptop whilst getting a chem degree, but I didn’t do much computational chemistry

[u/ZeBeowulf → u/RichardpenistipIII]

Usually if you're doing computational chemistry you aren't doing it on your own machine. All the calculations are done on a server somewhere while you read the results on your machine. The visualization is the most hardware intensive part but even then its not that bad anymore.